Marshall, Texas, June 26, 2015....Since beginning to do business in the United States in 2001 by importing Rio Ammunition from their Vitoria, Spain facilities, MAXAM Outdoors has grown to become a known quantity in the U.S. shotshell market. They were already a global force, manufacturing thirty percent of the shotshells in use around the world. Yesterday, Rio Ammunition officially inaugurated a new ammunition manufacturing facility in Marshall, Texas that demonstrates their belief in -and commitment to- the U.S. shooting market. Their new plant was running for the festivities, but only at a portion of full capacity due to the dislocation necessary to accommodate a host of dignitaries and visitors. When the Marshall plant reaches full capacity, it will be capable of cranking out more than one million shotgun shells every day . If you have a hard time with numbers that large, think 40,000 25-round boxes or 50,000 20-round boxes - daily. According to

Officials from Texas and MAXAM Outdoors officially kicked off the newest Rio Ammunition facility with speeches to welcome the new facility to Texas (above) and simultaneously say goodbye to Fernando Cubells, the MAXAM exec who spearheaded the project as his final corporate assignment (center).

All from a 105,000 square foot, $19 million dollar production facility that will quickly employ around 40 people and double in the none too-distant future. For the city of Marshall, the Marshall Development Corporation (MEDCO) and the state of Texas, that's reason enough to celebrate. Top executives from the Spanish corporation joined Texas officials to celebrate the expansion into an area with a storied history of ammunition manufacturing. In fact, MEDCO board member Hal Cornish is himself a former manager of the Longhorn ammunition plant there. Shortly afterwards, we toured what is without a doubt the cleanest and most technologically advanced ammunition manufacturing facility I've ever seen. A state of the art facility MAXAM President and CEO Jose' Fernando Sanchez-Junco said had a simple goal: "to add value and progress to the city of Marshall and the state of Texas while providing shooters and hunters in the United States with top quality products and services." Today, MAXAM produces more than a half-billion cartridges annually in facilities in Spain, the U.S., the U.K. and Turkey. The Marshall facility will amp up the output capacities of the United States facilities and will better enable the company to cater to the United States' more than 20 million shooters- the largest single marketplace in the world. And the growth of the Marshall facility represents yet another iteration of an international manufacturing company of 6,000 employees. A company that has grown because it bases its product development on a combination of proprietary technological developments that are the result of a continued investment in research and development that has been part of their 100-year plus history. Another benefit they enjoy is their "totally integrated production chain- from the manufacturing of the main raw materials to the production of every cartridge component; cases, primers, powders, wads, and lead shot." In other words, from the time they assist in the removal of raw materials from the earth (using blasting products from their another MAXAM division) to the time pallets of complete shot shells are labeled for shipping, they're developed in facilities owned and operated by the company. But high-performance shot shells for hunters, shooters and law enforcement aren't the only results of MAXAM's efforts.

The exhibit entitled "The MAXAM Collection: Spanish Painting Since 1900" features works from both classical (above Emilio Sala Francis"Woman With Shotgun" 1902) and contemporary Spanish painters (below, Raphael Canogar "Controlled Blast" 2007.

Their foundation, begun more than 100 years ago, has collected or commissioned Spanish paintings since 1900. And an evening celebration at the Latino Cultural Center in downtown Dallas last night celebrated the company's unveiling its first art display in the United States. While it's both a sociological tracking of the development of Spanish painting and culture of the past century, it's also a collection which uniquely addresses the usually appropriate fit of the shooting culture - more specifically the "shotgun culture" into the Spanish mainstream. "The MAXAM Collection: Spanish Painting Since 1900" will be on exhibit at the Latino Cultural Center in Dallas through June 30 and will move to the Michelson Museum of Art in Marshall, Texas, July 9- September 4. Like their shot shells- which we're using extensively today as we move from the factory to the trap fields- the unique art collection is worth checking out. They're a part of a company whose executives, like the departing Cubells feel that "here in Texas, we will always feel at home." --Jim Shepherd